Is the end of the B53 a truly historical moment? And does it mark a step towards a less dangerous world?

Here's a wrap-up of reactions, from email and phone interviews, to the finish of the nine-megaton B53 nuclear bomb.

Former U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency director Stephen Younger of the University of Hawaii, author of The Bomb, A New History:

The dismantlement of the B53 represents a transition in our nuclear strategy - the abandonment of multi-megaton weapons that were designed to maximize indiscriminate damage. Slowly, perhaps too slowly, we are recognizing that the type of devastation wrought by these devices is actually counter to our security interests. Some of the missions currently assigned to nuclear weapons can be accomplished with advanced conventional weapons, and the precision with which any type of weapon can be delivered to a target means that nuclear deterrence can be maintained with much smaller weapons than we current maintain. The dismantlement of the B53 was a step in that direction.

Goethe University professor Harald Mueller, Executive Director of Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, a major German security think tank:

Yes, the step has historical meaning - if only to remind us about the insanity of the nuclear arms race during the Cold War. At the same time, the celebration indicates how long a shadow an almost forgotten distant past casts about the present: The time when this weapon had strategic importance is more than two decades away - and only now it disappears. The admirable achievements of the engineers shows that technology is no showstopper on the road to nuclear disarmament, if the political will is there.

And a final thought: for those humans who evaporate after a nuclear blast it is relatively insignificant if the reason was of megaton or kiloton size. Making nukes smaller is no solution - only disarmament is.

Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Richard Rhodes, author of The Twilight of the Bombs, the fourth book in an acclaimed series examining the history of nuclear weapons and their proliferation:

"These were among the U.S.'s old monster bombs made in the heart of the Cold War, when Gen. Curtis LeMay was running the Strategic Air Command and he wanted the biggest bombs possible on bombers. His whole concept was to essentially wipe out the Soviet Union, and China too.

We've seen bigger ones, but nine megatons, God knows, is plenty, enough to take out any city or even a state.

There always was a correlation between accuracy and bomb yield, which drove the size of these weapons. They weren't very accurate then. And the argument was made that the Soviet Union had bigger missiles than us. It wasn't very subtle...

There has always been a generalized wariness, verging on paranoia, among people who feel the solution to any problem is to bomb it, that makes them reluctant to get rid of obsolete or dangerous weapons. And there is an industrial complex surrounding these weapons that has to be surmounted to get rid of them. That makes this a good step, but only a step.

Along with some other analysts, Rhodes argues that steps to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons undercut U.S. State Department efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide, in an era when the Cold War military rivalries are dead and China and the U.S.A. are major trading partners.

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